← Intelligence Squared
Intelligence Squared
How Tech Platforms Threaten Our Future, With Former White House Advisor Tim Wu (Part Two)
00:44:33
Loading summary
Transcript60 lines
- [00:01]
Progressive Insurance Announcer
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Most of you listening right now are probably multitasking. Yep, while you're listening to me talk, you're probably also driving, cleaning, exercising, maybe even grocery shopping. But if you're not currently operating some kind of moving vehicle, there's something else you could be doing right now that's easy and could save you money right from your Getting an auto quote from Progressive Insurance. Drivers who save by switching to Progressive save nearly $750 on average. Plus auto customers qualify for an average of 7 discounts. There are discounts for having multiple vehicles on your policy, being a homeowner and more. And just like your favorite podcast, Progressive will be with you 24 7, 365 days a year. So you're protected no matter what. So multitask right now. Quote your car insurance@progressive.com to to join over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive, Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. National average 12 month savings of $744 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary. Discounts not available in all states and situations.
- [01:17]
Tim Wu
You're about to make a trade. Which u do you listen to?
- [01:20]
Audience Member Isabella
Is it get optioning those options or.
- [01:25]
Progressive Insurance Announcer
Let'S do a little research.
- [01:27]
Tim Wu
Learn more@finra.org TradeSmart welcome to Intelligence Squared.
- [01:33]
Mia Sorrenti
Where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Sorrenti. Today we're bringing you part two of our recent live event with Tim Wu, recorded at Conway Hall. If you haven't heard part one yet, we recommend jumping back an episode to get up to speed. But now let's return to the discussion live at Conway hall in London.
- [01:54]
Intelligence Squared Host
You talk about turning the knobs, turning up the knobs on extraction. My least favorite phrase in this book, Tim, it's a quote you'll be pleased to hear was from a platform CEO who doesn't talk about turning the knobs. He calls on his staff to, quote, juice the hog.
- [02:16]
Tim Wu
Oh yeah.
- [02:20]
Intelligence Squared Host
I would ask you what juicing the hog is, Tim, but I would also invite you to because that CEO was not the CEO of a tech company or a platform that we might recognize here in the uk, a Google or Facebook and so on. That was a housing company.
- [02:38]
Tim Wu
Yes.
- [02:39]
Intelligence Squared Host
So this is, this is, I think one of the worries that I have looking into the future is this sort of idea, this platformization, this move to these extractive platforms is not limited to online marketplaces or Google or Search or anything else. This sounds like it's going into it's going on to our physical world. The hogs are being juiced in health care, in housing, perhaps also in transport, automotive, in Uber. You mentioned briefly in the book, is that. Is that where we're heading?
- [03:13]
Tim Wu
Yes. And I wrote this book, I was thinking of titles and I use Age of Extraction in part to describe I think a profound change in western economies and businesses always want to make money and that's normal. But I believe, and not only in tech, that what has become a dominant business model in our time is to look for places where you have overwhelming power over either a seller, someone in the marketplace and then look for the opportunity not just like take a lot, but extract. I mean American example. Things are a little different. Here is the transformation of the pharmaceutical industry, which I don't talk about in the book and I'll talk about housing in a second. But I think there was a period where the pharmaceutical industry in the United States was. Its business model obviously gave it a lot of power, but they restrained ethically from. And I think that has really changed and that so much of pharmaceutical business model. I'm sorry people aren't farming here, but at least in the United States is finding opportunities. Let's say there's a rare disease and a rare drug and you can turn how much are people going to pay for cancer treatments for a disease that would otherwise kill them? The number turns out to be about $100,000 a year is what the pharma companies go for as their ideal extraction point. I think I should define extraction by the way, while I'm at it, because I don't have profit taking, I think is normal. Extraction refers to the ability to extract much more value, whether money or it could be data, it could be attention to be sold relative to the price of what you're selling, what you're providing. So if that makes sense. Like for example, have you ever had a situation where you've had to fly in an airplane last minute and you go up to the counter and they have an empty seat. So to them it's not any. There's no additional cost if they have an empty seat. But they kind of have you. And so you know, they can charge thousand pounds, whatever they want for that last minute thing. So that's what I mean by extraction. And I think it's spread, I think in the housing market. In fact, I know in the chapter describes it, you know, in housing this is in the United States again there was this sense when I look at the tech platforms, they've got a great organization and so in the 2000 and tens, there was a huge wave of foreclosures. All these empty houses with no owners. And a number of firms, invitation homes being one of them I described, backed mainly by private equity, realized that what they could do was buy a ton of foreclosed homes, fix them up, and then begin renting them, but in a much more systematic and organized way than ever been done before. So, you know, normally landlords are. Normally they're individuals, families, maybe they own another house. So they're sort of distributed. Landlords can be cruel sometimes, but they're not as organized. The corporate housing sector is extremely systematic. So they bought all these houses, turned them around and missed no opportunity to raise the rent. It's not like the rent stays. It always increases. Use every single possible fee to try to charge prices. Charge for. I think they charge. There was one I was looking at that charges for pets. I think it's like I can't remember the number. I wish I had like $1,600 a year, I think. Was it $1,600 a year for the privilege of having your own cat? And like. So, you know, and the juice, the hog quote was from the CEOs trying to get more money out of it. And the fees, that's where you go. The fees seem like a small thing, but they're a big thing when they get aggregated. And so many business models have turned to. I think it's worse in the United States to find the fees juice the hog extract maximally. And I think it's, as you might suggest, not the greatest thing to have ever happened to civilization.
- [07:36]
Intelligence Squared Host
Yeah, it was always growing up, it always puzzled me that you go to a corner shop here in the UK and it would always say amex not accepted. Oh yeah. I think perhaps that's one of. You know, I think my understanding from the book is that Amex charges 3% on its transactions. And here in the UK that.
- [07:50]
Tim Wu
That.
- [07:50]
Intelligence Squared Host
Well, based on European regulation, that number is a tenth of that. That perhaps being one. One step. One step.
- [07:57]
Tim Wu
Although Europe and the UK missed an opportunity. I. Sorry, we could talk about this later. By basically accepting Visa and MasterCard's monopoly and Amex, I guess a triopoly and somehow not. They don't take. I agree that on the debit side, but there's a big margin.
- [08:15]
Audience Member Isabella
There is.
- [08:15]
Tim Wu
It's kind of a private tax extracted by US banks on all commerce in Europe and the UK through them. And anyway, we can talk later about why Europe lets these kind of things happen to itself. But in a lot of ways, Europe and the United Kingdom over the last 25 years have said, you know, go ahead, have Americans, Britains and Europeans are basically paying a giant tax to American monopoly, a big private tax that is like a weight on the economies over here. Now I live in the US so I guess I benefit from it. But sometimes I wonder, how did you let that happen?
- [08:54]
Intelligence Squared Host
And it's fascinating to see where leadership against that actually is coming from. Now it's countries like Brazil and India and Kenya that really are innovating in this space to try to sort of get out from underneath these monopolies. I want to turn to, I mean.
- [09:06]
Tim Wu
Can I just stop on that side? Imagine a politician said, I'm running for office and I think we should give even like 2 or 3% of every transaction to the United States because we like them. You know, people are like what? In effect that was. Somehow people don't think of private monopoly prices as taxation. So anyway, so sorry, no, we'll come.
- [09:25]
Intelligence Squared Host
To this, the solutions piece, which I think is critical because this is a book with a set of paths forward. And obviously you are very well known for your work in the White House around competition. So I'm not burying the lead in saying that antitrust is part of it. But the last piece that I want to touch on is the consequences of an economy that is shaped like this because it feels like there are economic consequences, some of which we've touched on. Yes, but there are also political consequences. You outline, and correct me if I'm wrong, there's sort of five stages that an economy could go through. One where extraction, first with monopoly, then extraction, but then it pivots to resentment and eventually it ends up in a sort of an authoritarianism or some kind of strongman. And I suppose looking at the US which I think is front of mind for many folks, at least since February 20th. Where are we on that? Yes, where are we on that?
- [10:21]
Tim Wu
In a very terrifying place, as I think can be generally agreed. Maybe that's partially why we are. I've been to make clear we're living in Oxford right now, although my home is still in the United States. So the basic theory which you mentioned is that monopoly extraction, I guess simplest way of putting it, is that tolerating widespread extraction from the entire society to a small number of companies is very politically dangerous. And I'll explain why. I do have that five step sequence which I call the real road to serfdom. And I'll explain a little better. So first is the tolerance of Monopoly in too many and important industries. The second step is an extraction from the rest of the economy and also from consumers. The third is the rise of mass resentment in reaction. And I want to be very careful about the use of that phrase resentment and mass resentment as a political emotion, because it comes from a different place than mere anger, which might come from feeling individually that you lost or something. I think resentment, I read a great book about resentment, comes from a sense that no matter what you do, you're going to lose, that you're, you know, that it's not individualized, that it's just your group is being disfavored, whatever that group may be that you're in. You know, it could be racial, it could be class, could be something else. But that is a different form of political emotion and leads to a kind of, a different broad based kind of anger. It's often directed and you know, it can be directed at immigrants, it can be directed at elites, it can be directed at corporate, it can go in all kinds of directions. But it is a real political phenomenon. And at that point, I think there's a key juncture for a democracy or a government that hopes to survive, which is you can either rebalance the economy somehow or give the people some sense that the system is being fixed, or fix it and try to rebalance economic power if the country is unable to do that. If democracy fails, I've been developing a theory of political failure as an adjunct to market failure. If there is no ability to solve that problem, that sets the stage historically. And I've gone through the history of many countries that go through exactly all these phases, either for the rise of some kind of populist strongman. And that can take a lot of forms. It can take the form of a communist revolution, as in Russia, which ultimately had various inabilities to deal with their economic dysfunction. It can become a fascist uprising in Italy, Germany, places like that. It can just be an ordinary kind of populist strong man. You know, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Hugo Chavez is incredibly popular because he said, I'm here for you. They always have the message of the system has failed, it's broken, it's fixed. You need someone who really listens to the people. I mean, that's the message of revolutionary communism. I'm going to think the lesson of fascism or the message of it. And also currently the message of our current president of the United States, which is like, I'm actually here for you. Forget all these other guys. So that's the danger. Democracy has to prove itself or face its own replacement. And that's where I think we are today. Sorry to be so upbeat about it.
- [14:17]
Intelligence Squared Host
When I want to turn to the solutions. But before that there's one piece of this which I don't understand which is is there any like how sustainable is a system where it feels like the outcomes or the products or the results suck? Like how long can it go on for? Like at some point these tenants in these homes that are, that are rising in price or full of mold. These results where I have to scroll 30 pages, then 40 pages, then 50 pages. My products that are all made by these. At some point does it not just collapse in and of itself, it's like this just sucks.
- [14:59]
Tim Wu
Unfortunately, I think a bad situation can last for a very long time. Unfortunately that's a great message. Longer than you might think as your instincts are. But somehow it has to break down, I guess think you can. I mean one of the sad facts of human history is that periods of democracy and like representative government are rare. Much more common is some version of autocracy or dictatorship or something. And also non feudal economies are rare. I'll get to the collapse here, but I just want to point those things out that most of the, the middle class which I think we sort of take for granted is this. You're going to have sort of thrown all around but you'll have some class. Between poor and rich is a relatively new thing and is an aberration in human history. So it's not like oh of course there's going to be a middle class. We could return to something more like Charles Dickens kind of error or something like that. We have this just profound divide and there is, I think so there are tendencies that I think fight against going back to platforms. You know, the depreciation or you know, how long can they become terrible or how long can they stay terrible? It starts to depend. I think this is kind of why it's a key moment and why I've written this book now is a company or a monopoly I think can escape orbit particularly if it partners with government and kind of go beyond any possibility of its easy replacement. I say this from some of my other books where you see these monopolies that last like 70 years, even longer. If you look at other countries, I don't know if somebody was looking at Mexico. You know, they've had these state telecom monopolists have been robbing the population for like 100 years. So it can last a really long time. And the forces of challenge or change can get weaker and Weaker. So there is this kind of key moment. I think we're almost in right now. The tech platforms are about 20 years old. They're starting to show signs of age. You know, will we challenge them? Will we find some way and maybe they can get better. I mean, a big part is this is true of humans as well as companies. Is lack of any discipline at all is bad for people. Has anyone ever had an author they love? I hope I don't become this person whose first books are great and then their editors are like, do whatever you want. And then they write some thousand page thing that goes kind of on and on and on. Anyway, a lot of musicians have this problem that's individuals. But I think it's true with everything in our society is a lack of some kind of discipline. It can be from government, clean up your act, do better. It can be from competitors who show up, are cheaper. We got to improve ourselves. It can be internal. It can come from the company's management, it can come from the employees. Employees are all quitting because the place sucks. So these forces do go in that direction. But I just want to say they're not inevitable. And this is a really key moment given again, the stakes. These are our public spaces. This isn't some like there was a time in the Internet. Well, this is a little thing that the dude in the basement is dealing with. And who cares? His online game is crashing. World of Warcraft is not as good as it used to be. That's one thing. But this is everything now. This is our politics. This is how we buy stuff. This is who we are. And we need to bring discipline back to this arena.
- [18:53]
Intelligence Squared Host
How do we fix this? We talked about antitrust. Why antitrust over something like taxation? Is this about rebalancing the structure of the economy? What is it specifically about breaking up these monopolies that you find so compelling?
- [19:07]
Tim Wu
Sure, yes, I'm a deep believer in the importance of anti monopoly or anti trust is a old fashioned American word for monopoly. Monopoly, trust. So whenever you hear antitrust, it means anti monopoly. So the reason is frankly what I said, discipline. I think a monopoly is a form of private power, unchecked private power. And just as we here in this country and others don't believe that a king or a president should have absolutely undisciplined power with no accountability or no checks. You know, I give the United Kingdom a lot of credit for coming up with the idea of separation of power between the commons, lords and monarchy, you know, just as that is important. Similarly, you know, A company needs checks on its power and needs discipline and government can provide an anti monopoly does that in more than one way. One, they can break it up so they're forcing to compete with each other or it can just ban the most egregious ways of preventing, of immunizing itself against challenges. Maybe that's a little complicated.
- [20:26]
Intelligence Squared Host
This is buying up a company that might be a challenge to you. As we saw with I don't know WhatsApp being or Instagram being bought by.
- [20:34]
Tim Wu
Facebook or Waze is a good example.
- [20:37]
Intelligence Squared Host
But I'm not sure how familiar folks will be with Waze. It's like a mapping software, right?
- [20:40]
Tim Wu
Yes. Maybe it's not familiar here. Well, in the United States at least there's two big map companies online, Waze and Google Maps. How many people aware of Waze? Yeah, okay. So you know, there was a period it seemed really exciting. There was these two 2012 there's two mapping companies and they had different approaches and one was kind of a little more based on user contributions, exciting as Waze. And the other was Google just already getting a little middle aged and it was going to be this great competition. And then one day Google just bought Waze. And I remember I was working in the federal government then I was like whoa, how did. Isn't that. Now let me just have you Professor, a little thing anti monopoly law is supposed to ban mergers to monopoly. So you're not supposed to be able to buy. Two companies are not supposed to be able to come just one. And they were the only real mapping companies. It happened and they eliminated their greatest rival challenger which at the time it could have become a big challenger. Maybe they'd have a search engine or something, who knows. Years later I figured out how this happened. I was at an antitrust party, there are such things in D.C. and had some drinks with and I talked to the lawyer and I was like how did this happen? So obviously merger two, monopoly, those are illegal. She said well, the boss really felt like we had to let it go. So he came up with this theory. What was his theory? He said well, Google is what you use when you want to figure out where you are and Waze is what you use when you want to figure out where you're going so they're not actually competing with each other. So anyway with that it takes a lot of education to say something that absurd actually. So that is how that happened. But yes, any monopoly to me is important because it's an almost constitutional level of discipline. You know, it forces there is some Check on private power.
- [22:49]
Shopify Advertiser
You didn't start a business just to keep the lights on. You're here to sell more today than yesterday. You're here to win. Lucky for you, Shopify built the best converting checkout on the planet. Like the just one tapping ridiculously fast acting sky high sales stacking champion at checkouts. That's the good stuff right there. So if your business is in it to win it, win with Shopify. Start your free trial today@shopify.com win.
- [23:25]
Intelligence Squared Host
Is taxation something of a different nature or is. Yeah, I think, I suppose that's my final question here before we turn to the audience is how much credence should we put in the stuff? In fact, let me rephrase that a little bit because it's easy, it's sometimes difficult sitting in middle power like we are today. You know, we, we took back control. We are a smaller country now. And even looking at Europe, when it comes to solutions to the kinds of problems described in your book, what would you hope for from countries like the uk? Are we empowered in the same way that the US government might be or do we just have a different set of tools?
- [24:07]
Tim Wu
Yes, that's a good question. Let me finish quickly on what I think in the abstract the US could do. But I do want to talk about the United States. So anti monopoly is one thing. The other thing I mentioned pubs and public callings and I think we need to spend some time figuring out what are the utilities of our era and you know, like the equivalent of the electric network or maybe the train or the roads and some of the platforms have taken on that role. And we never say, oh okay, you know, this company is running the electric network. I don't know if Britain is a private or public. In the United States they're private companies. And we don't say, okay, well you run the electric network, charge whatever you want, provide service to that house if you're friends with them, but you don't have to provide them service if you don't like them. Or they have to because they're essential, they have to provide service and their prices are regulated and they have to be reliable. And a lot of people just to go this further, have a lot of building, a lot of economic growth happen on top of the electric network. We sort of forget it. But like, you know, people invented refrigerators, invented the computer, they invented video games, they invented like all these industries owe their existence to the electric network. And that is a little bit how I think the platform should be. They should be supporting, they should Be catalyzing. They should be helping. I say in the book somewhere that they have a problem with main character syndrome, which is to say, like Amazon and Facebook. And they keep thinking, you know, like an overgrown electric network or like, imagine that the train system said, okay, we run the trains, so therefore we're going to control everything that happens on the trains. So we want to own all the hotels and the. You know, that sounds crazy, but that's sort of what the platforms are saying now. They're saying, and this will get to the UK in a second because it's relevant. They're like, no, we are going to build the future. You know, we've got this. We're going to build the future. So you cannot mess with us ever, or else we will not build the future and you'll be left in the past. It's basically like a blackmail kind of thing. In fact, there's this one guy, Marc Andreessen, who's, I don't know, probably not well known here. He's a very wealthy. He wrote this manifesto. He's a very influential person in Silicon Valley.
- [26:22]
Intelligence Squared Host
Good guy.
- [26:23]
Tim Wu
And he wrote a manifesto where he suggested that those who interfere with the progress of AI are committing a form of crime because AI could save human lives in the future. So therefore, if you interfere with it or if you question it or tax it or anything, you are, in a way, a form of murderer. Which struck me as going a little bit too far. I mean, obviously, and it's like, you cannot mess with this, but it comes back to the United Kingdom, I think, because you need the, you know, a country like the United Kingdom needs platforms, needs there to be some kind of support. But why it's therefore agreed that everything that happens on the platform is going to belong to them is crazy. And, I mean, I don't know, it starts with the somewhat. The original sin with Europe and the United Kingdom of being so, I guess, willing to lay down their arms and let American. Look, I'm a beneficiary of this as someone who lives in the United States, but Europeans have been, and including the United Kingdom for the last 20 years, have just kind of said, have all our markets, they're yours. We'll do some actually relatively weak regulation which Ireland will fail to enforce anyway. So there's no real problem. And it's kind of an amazing thing. So if I were the strong version of what I think Europe and the UK should do, is first of all, not start talking to yourself as some kind of middle power. I think Europeans, it amazes me that this and we'll address you as Europeans, if you don't mind the UK and the Europeans as an area that has more buying power than anywhere else on Earth. This idea, they're sort of weak and can't do anything strikes me as totally crazy. And the idea that other countries monopolies not only provide the platform but then get to control what happens on top of them, what is built over it so that they can favor Amazon, sell its own products in competition with local products or Apple can control the whole ecosystem. That strikes me as really unusual in human history and I can say more about it. In fact, I think I have an article in the Guardian on this topic this weekend. So if you subscribe to that, watch out for that. Sorry, I've gone past time.
- [28:48]
Intelligence Squared Host
Well, no, but I'm also proud of us that we did an hour on technology and only right at the end did we talk about AI. That's true, but that now is your opportunity and I think I will take the chair's privilege to ask you one question on AI, but let me open it up, let us know what your name is and if you put your hand up, a mic will come to you. We'll start down here and we'll take them in groups of three.
- [29:13]
Audience Member Isabella
All right, thank you so much. Great talk. It was hitting on a lot of the points which actually I was thinking about coming in. By the way, I'm Isabella, I'm actually with the SOAS delegation over here. I study IR and law second year. So what I was thinking about.
- [29:30]
Intelligence Squared Host
Isabella, sorry, can I push you for a question?
- [29:32]
Tim Wu
Yeah, thanks.
- [29:33]
Audience Member Isabella
I am, I am sorry, sorry. What I was going to say was okay, in the case of the US right now we are seeing Silicon Valley basically take hold of the government and with those, the underlying ideologies that we're seeing of libertarianism and effective accelerationism, which is basically what you were saying before about how if you stop AI, that is a crime and you should basically be sentenced to death. Given that, what would be feasible to do in the US to for example restrict kind of technology, knowing full well that libertarianism is going to try and basically say no, we need to lower restrictions so that then we can basically make the AI better, make the AGI better.
- [30:17]
Intelligence Squared Host
Thanks Isabella, really helpful. Yeah, we will go just over here in the middle, please. What's your name?
- [30:24]
Audience Member Sophia
Hi, I'm Sophia. Thank you so much for the, the talk. I'm a corporate, commercial and competition lawyer and I just have a question about Google search and obviously there is an evolution now where it's now showing its AI in search. And to what extent do you think or we are kind of arguing that this is a sort of bundling and exploitation of, you know, publisher material it's then presenting at the top of the page. And I just wondered what you thought about that.
- [30:57]
Intelligence Squared Host
Thanks for. Yeah, gentlemen, thank you.
- [31:00]
Tim Wu
Thanks. I'm head of investigation investigation division of Competition Authority from Kazakhstan and I wonder if the AI platforms will follow the history of big tech like meta Google in being investigated by competition authorities in the future.
- [31:19]
Intelligence Squared Host
Thanks very much. Two questions there actually about almost the rise of a technology that might challenge the tech platforms. And I think there's an interesting question there in your book as to will they be allowed, will AI challenge the platforms? Are they investing in these technologies in order just to sort of kill off any competition?
- [31:40]
Tim Wu
Sure. Thank you for these antitrust, anti monopoly questions. Right. In my field I think that the stakes are very high and are not that well noticed by not I think competition law and antitrust people notice it very carefully in the challenge of AI to the tech platforms. I guess what I'm saying is a lot of people sort of assume that AI will reinforce the tech platforms. But there is this opportunity, you're saying, does everything last forever? There is an opportunity for AI to pose a significant challenge to the dominant platforms, discipline them, force them to be better. In some ways this is happening to some extent right now and I think that is an important dynamic and if I were back in antitrust or anti monopoly enforcement, I would be trying to make sure that that remains a fight. If you have two enormous big giants that have a lot of power, you want them to be fighting with each other will eventually OpenAI or other AI companies become bloated, monopolistic? That happens to everybody eventually. I think all things go through a cycle but right now we need that disruptive forced to try to play them off against each other. So I think that's very important. You know the details, Sophia, of this, of the suit. I just think anything that I mean the reason we really the stakes of the Google case, which you seem to be familiar with and I don't assume everyone was, but I'll try to stay not too technical. When we started that case or when we pursued that case in the Biden administration, it was to prevent Google from merely swallowing AI with its own products. So I think anything that keeps them at each other is very important. On this other question around the race and the future of AI. So I have more than a few comments or a few answers on it first, the race dynamic is races can be good, but racism can also be a rhetoric that is used to point to a particular outcome. And in the United States, and maybe the whole world, the Silicon Valley has settled on the idea that we're in a race with China. And it's true that China has important things, components. And since we're in that race, if you do anything to interfere with us, we the great gods, you are basically voting for rule by communist totalitarian Chinese overlords in your future. So it's a bit of a blackmail and also a bit of a competitive move. My answer to that, and I spent a lot of time thinking about races and technological competition. The fact is, even if you want to, I mean, let's say this was soccer, all right, let's say there's some World cup coming. Football, sorry, let me use local language. We're talking about football, sport, any kind of sport. And let's say there's some great international competition coming. I mean, would you want to have a domestic league or would you want to say, well, we can't have our local team play against anybody else because that might interfere with them. Our domestic industries, if we're going to challenge China, need to train. And the way you train is they are exposed to competition through the anti monopoly laws. So I think it's very important. I have a lot of thoughts about that. But I think the United States and the west need to resist this idea that because we're facing China, we're in a status where you can't ask any questions or force companies to fight each other domestically. I don't know at that point. And will there be extraction all the way down? I mean, that's what it, you know, again, that's that blackmail part is like we have to be able to do anything we want or else we'll lose to China. Hope that answers the question.
- [35:53]
Intelligence Squared Host
But you do believe that AI is in some way going to empower the same behaviors that you'll be able to extract better?
- [36:04]
Tim Wu
I think what AI becomes is an open question. And I talk in the book about the fact. I talk in the book about two kinds of technologies and technological revolutions. Let me try to not go on forever on this, but consider the difference between the plow and the cotton gin. So the plow is a very important technology in human history and it was invented in many places at once. And one of the things that was very important about the plow, or I think particularly to my mind, compelling is all over. It made farmers all over the world wealthier because they could more efficiently plow their land, have more crops. It was a big part, but it's extremely decentralized. You think about the plot, it's owned by a farmer and goes on where the cotton gin was invented in 19th century United States and it's this big device and you put a bunch of cotton. And because of where it was and where it was, it fortified the economics of plantation slavery, which was already very centralized, became even more centralized. And most historians think that the cotton gin extended slavery in the United states for another 50 or 60 years, leading to the Civil War. So I think that AI could go in different directions. AI could be plausibly, I guess, a complementary or an augmentative technology that makes individual workers and professionals and businesses able to do more with fewer employees. I have some friends in small part of the tech world who feel they're able to build products more quickly without having to hire. I mean they don't have to hire programmers, so it's a little bad, but they feel that that's an advantage. Maybe it'll make individuals in various fields more productive and effective, but it could also be and lead us in direction, which I think is being referred to. Whereas just a mass reliance on AI as a substitute for humans. In the same way in the automotive industries, robots have not science fiction robots, but mechanized work has replaced a lot of the workers in those. So I think it's at a key place. In some ways I think we should push it towards this augmented direction. I haven't figured exactly how to do this, but I think we should want AI to be something. I mean above all that is a tool that works for us and not our master. In some ways it come back to. This is very fundamental. We should come back to we're tool using creatures. So we need to make sure our technologies always remain our tools, like a hammer or a saw, and not let them somehow become our masters.
- [38:56]
Intelligence Squared Host
I think we're going to take a vote on the question that we were asked at the beginning. So do whip your phones out, scan the QR code, see whether our opinion has changed over the course of the last hour and a half. Tim, I want to finish with a question.
- [39:13]
Tim Wu
Sure.
- [39:14]
Intelligence Squared Host
Who inspires you? Who should we be looking at other political movements or political figures that give you hope that might get us to the point where there are more democracies in 15 years time? Who's. Who should we be listening to on. On our podcast? Who should we be tuning in?
- [39:31]
Tim Wu
That's a good question. I. You mean like as in terms of political figures or just.
- [39:38]
Intelligence Squared Host
Or people who give you hope.
- [39:40]
Tim Wu
Personally, I think all the political figures who have learned to speak to this generation's sense of economic unfairness, I have a lot of hope and people who can translate what is sometimes an abstract talk into something more concrete. I was very inspired by Mondami's campaign. You know, I'm not a socialist myself, but I think he also didn't get too far into that and, you know, was able to speak to a pain that a lot of New Yorkers feel. So I give him a lot of credit for that. I'm trying to think of who. Honestly, I've been reading a lot of fiction lately, so I don't know, but I somehow been reading Thomas Hardy lately. I don't know if Thomas Hardy's the guy you want to have on your podcast since he's dead, but I wish I could do better than that.
- [40:33]
Intelligence Squared Host
Well, AI can sort that out. We're good at that. Well, I mean, Ayan Salina Khan has been.
- [40:39]
Tim Wu
Leena Khan, who is the transition administration, is it. Yeah, she is helping with the transition. Her and I are. She's at Columbia also. So we. I think there is a movement in this definitely in the United States and I hope a movement here to kind of. It's roughly the anti monopoly movement. It's roughly. It lacks some definition, but it's definitely there. And I think its fundamental idea is it seeks a rebalancing of the economy in some ways a return to sort of like the dream of the post war era that frankly, we could have a broad, lasting prosperity, a wealthy middle class. And I think we get back to that dream in the 90s. We thought we had it, we took it for granted. But I honestly believe it is within our power to get back to where we were and have the kind of society we'd like to have. And it starts with the platforms.
- [41:33]
Intelligence Squared Host
Tim, results are in. Not on here. They're on our screens. The final poll result. We started off at 70 and 13. We've moved to 83% are convinced that tech platforms threaten our future. Not much budge on the. No. Interesting. Who's in the audience on the know. Perhaps we can chat afterwards. But critically, the undecideds have moved 10%. Listen, we are at time. Thank you everybody for joining us this evening. Thank you for your fabulous questions. Thank you to Connor and the team at Intelligence.
- [42:12]
Tim Wu
Can I say one last thing? I think anyone who can talk to economic pain without resorting to hate, that's who I'm inspired by talking about economic pain without resorting to hate but instead delivering hope. That is who we need in our times.
- [42:25]
Intelligence Squared Host
Thank you, Tim. Yeah, that's absolutely right. Just hold with me one I want to just emphasize thank you to Connor and the team at Intelligence Squared this evening for organizing as you say, they've got a big spring program coming up. Do check that out. Tim will be signing his book in the foyer, so please do stick around and I hope you've already given two rounds of applause, but let's give one more to our speaker. Tim, thank you so much for joining us.
- [42:53]
Mia Sorrenti
Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode was produced by Connor Boyle and it was edited by Mark Roberts for ad free episodes and full length recordings. You can become a member@intelligencesquared.com membership and to join us at future live events, just head over to Intelligence Square to see our full events program. You've been listening to Intelligence Squared. Thanks for joining us.